Uber and Lyft see their ad businesses boom as advertisers look beyond Google and Meta
Expedia ad en route to JFK… well played. Uber said that its record revenue last quarter was driven partly by an acceleration in its ad biz. Refresher: Uber launched in-app “journey ads” in October, a few months after Lyft launched its own ad-media unit. Think: interactive tablets in cars, digital screens on top of cars, and branded logos in the app (like Oscar Mayer wienermobiles moving on the Lyft map).
Uber said it surpassed $500M in annual run rate for ads as advertisers on its platform soared. 315K companies ran ads with Uber last quarter — nearly double the # from a year earlier.
Lyft said its ad sales almost 7X’d from the previous quarter. While it didn’t break out #s or discuss its ad biz in its latest earnings, it said ad growth exceeded its goals.
Taco Tuesday gets #targeted… Uber and Lyft have data on your riding habits (weekend trips to the bar, midweek rides to yoga), which they can use to surface targeted ads. Those are highly valuable to marketers. Unlike Lyft, Uber has the benefit of a food-delivery biz, so it knows about your late-night taco cravings. And it sees plenty of room for growth, since only a fourth of companies listed on Uber Eats are advertising there. Uber’s targeting $1B in annual ad revenue by 2024.
Competition can come from unlikely sources… When it comes to digital marketing dollars, the focus has usually been on ad-reliant tech titans like Google and Meta. Now, not only are they getting competition from newer social platforms like TikTok, they’re losing market share to companies like Uber, Kroger, CVS, and Ulta, which have leveraged their trove of customer data to peddle ads (and, in some cases, just data). Last year, Google and Meta’s share of US digital ad revenue was less than 50% for the first time in a decade.